1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a video recording/reproducing (playback) apparatus which records various video data in a recording/reproducing hard disk and reproduces the recorded video data displayed on a screen.
2. Related Art
In recent years, as a recording medium for recording a digital video broadcasting signal in CS broadcasting or BS broadcasting, a video recording/reproducing apparatus using a hard disk in place of a video tape which was used conventionally has been provided.
The recording of the video data such as the digital broadcasting signal in such a hard disk necessarily reaches a limit of capacity. The hard disk, unlike a disk medium such as a video tape or CD-ROM, is securely set up within an appliance and generally cannot be replaced easily by a user. This is because the hard disk is fabricated very precisely and its handling by a general user damages the data as the case may be. Therefore, the hard disk set up within the appliance has a predetermined data quantity (capacity). The recording after having reached the limit of capacity is performed so as to record new data (overwrite recording) while the old video data are being erased (concretely, erased in order from the video data initially recorded).
[Problems to be solved]
Namely, the rewrite of data is executed irrespectively of the intention of a user. Therefore, the video data which have been already unnecessary for the user cannot be overwritten with new video data through selection by the user. This is problematic.
When various video data recorded in the hard disk are reproduced, the conventional video recording/reproducing apparatus using the hard disk has no means for knowing the contents of the video data recorded in the hard disk beforehand. Therefore, the user has been required to make a troublesome operation of searching video data the user wants to watch by reproducing the video data sequentially from the start, or otherwise in the reproducing (playback) mode changed at a suitable timing after fast-forward.
Incidentally, the video recording/reproducing apparatus disclosed in e.g. the Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei7-37369 is provided with the means for displaying the recorded contents before reproduction. In this apparatus, in recording, identification information for identifying a video cassette is recorded on a magnetic tape and the recording information indicative of the recording contents, e.g. still image data of a scene of a program is stored in a memory. In reproducing, the still image data of each program read from the memory is displayed on a screen. Therefore, the user can know the video data recorded on the magnetic tape before reproducing. However, this technique relates to the magnetic tape. Particularly, repeated overwrite recording may lead to inconsistency between the recorded contents on the magnetic tape and the contents stored in the memory. Therefore, this technology cannot be directly applied to the video recording/reproducing apparatus using the hard disk. Further, although displaying the still image data of the program permits the contents of the programs and their recorded positions to be recognized, when a new program is recorded on any recorded program, the magnetic tape must be fed back to the start of the pertinent recorded program, and thereafter recording operation or recording programming must be done. As in the prior art, the recording operation is still troublesome.
This invention has been accomplished in order to solve the problems described above. An object of this invention is to provide a video recording/reproducing apparatus which can reproduce or overwrite-record the video data desired by a user by a very simple operation when any video data are reproduced from a hard disk or when any video data recorded in the hard disk is overwritten with new video data.